My head is aching, it feels like the hangover from hell. Although, I know for a fact I haven't been drinking, I don't drink anymore; it's too dangerous for me to lose the flimsy grip on my self-control. I groan squeezing my eyes shut as the light sears my eyelids, painting the world in shades of orange and red. Slowly, I push myself upright fighting nausea the whole way.
What happened? I try to focus on the last thing I remember but everything spins into a whirlwind of chaos. Unfortunately, waking up and not knowing how I got there isn't an uncommon occurrence for me. I force my limited energy into taking deep breaths through my nose. After a moment, I think I feel settled enough to open my eyes. When I do, my bedroom looks strangely unfamiliar. It's still my room, of course, but it's different. I can't explain how; it has the feeling of returning to a place after a long time and noticing small changes. Like the laundry basket is fuller than I remember it being, and I'm sure the last time I slept in this bed I'd had the blue sheets on, not the white. The small, seemingly innocuous changes are my first clue that I'm missing time.
Groaning, I surge to my feet and the world tilts slightly before righting itself with startling clarity. I blink away the dizziness and push my limbs to move forward. Best to just rip it off; like a band aid. I enter my kitchen to find Emma at the counter, fidgeting with my coffee machine. A strange sense of déjà vu lingers at the back of my mind but I brush it off. Obviously this looks familiar, Emma's been in my kitchen a million and one times. "Step away from the coffee maker, Miller."
She starts, jerking her head around in my direction. "Oh, you're up." She smiles at me then, and there's something so put upon about the expression that the hairs at the nape of my neck stand up, there's an uncomfortable sloshing in my stomach. Call it women's intuition but there's definitely something off here. "Hungry?"
I shake myself from my thought, I'm being paranoid ; I'm sure of it. "Uh, no thanks. I've had enough nightmares for one morning." I say, giving the watery concoction she's stirring in the saucepan a pointed look.
"It's oatmeal." She huffs indignantly and I can't help but chuckle. Settling into the familiarity of teasing Emma over her godawful cooking.
"Yeah maybe in a past life," I snicker. "Poor thing never stood a chance." I fill my voice with mock sorrow and make an exaggeratedly grief-stricken expression. She sticks her tongue out at me.
Turning away, I grab an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter and begin polishing it off on my tank top. Emma fills the morning silence by humming inane tunes under her breath, once or twice I think I catch the strains of the latest Taylor Swift song but I'm not really paying her much mind. Instead, I wander into the living room and stare at the cork board that sits atop my tiny, cluttered desk. There are tiny pinholes in it from all the times I've used it before but the board is currently empty. I usually fill it with leads from my investigations or information for my articles. It's not unusual for the board to be empty once I've finished a story or given up on investigating a new lead. No, what stood out to me were the deep grooves dug into the cork. Little pinpricks that are deeper than they should be as if someone had ripped the paper clean off the board without taking the time to unstick the pins. As if someone was in a hurry to remove the information.
Logically, I know it could've been me but I have a compulsive tendency to remove each piece of paper one by one. It's always been a weird little tick that got worse when my memory went to hell, I prefer to remove the information in order of where it's positioned on the board. I find it helps me, sometimes I notice things I wouldn't have otherwise. Running my fingers over the furrows in the cork board, I try to think of all the reasons why someone might have been is a rush to get it cleared off. The only people who would've been able to do this are Emma or Haider. Emma has no reason to screw with my investigation board, I would've been telling her all about it anyway. She's always with me every step of the way. Haider might have done it if he didn't want me looking into a lead anymore.
Unbidden, a flash of a conversation floats through my mind. 'I knew you were the right man for the job from the very beginning but Peter had better credentials on paper.' Feelings of dread, the sensation of my heart cracking along the pre-existing fissures… the smell of smoky wood and the earth before a rainstorm, the image of night back eyes, and a rage roughened voice… they rattle inside my skull, banging against the walls and knocking against each other, fighting to be noticed.
Pinching the bridge of my nose to ward off the nausea churning in my belly, I place the apple down on the smooth white surface of the desk. My head spins, and the more I push against the swirling images and sensations the worse it gets. There's a sense of something recognizable here, something I've seen before. For some inexplicable reason I think of Dastan. What does he have to do with any of this?
He wouldn't have messed with my investigation, right? No last I check he couldn't stand me. Wait, no… no, that's not right. We'd made peace, I think. We'd stopped fighting, but we did fight. I remember that, breathing deeply through my nose I clench my eyes shut and focus on that particular memory. My hands grip the edge of the table as the pounding, splitting pain inside my head intensifies. But then I see Dastan, in a suit, standing inside a small room… a box? No, I doubt that's right… An elevator! His face alight with fury, heavy eyebrows drawn together, dark eyes piercing me. Suddenly the image shifts, I'm staring at a white wall, there's muffled noise in the background. I don't know what it supposed to mean. I can't focus on anything because my head hurts and everything feels likes it's about to implode.
I'm ready to just go lie down and wait for it to pass. But I can't, this is a memory. I don't know how I know but I do and I need to know what it is. It feels important, it feels life altering. Hunching over the table I bring my forehead down on the cool wood, eyes squeezing tighter as I focus on the sounds in my head. Images flurrying in and out of focus. An overheard conversation, Dastan's hands on my skin, Emma in a club going up against a behemoth of a man… blood, and rage and pain. There's a voice beneath all of it, in the distance. Someone saying the same thing over and over and over again. One word. No, not a word, my name.
"Kiera!" Emma's voice jolts me back to the present. "Are you okay?" She's standing less than a foot away, her hands wringing the life out of a dish towel. She's biting the skin on her lip, it's red and raw as if she'd been doing it for a while. How didn't I notice that before?
I raise my head of the desk slowly, and she watches me with weary eyes. Just as I open my mouth to tell her what just happened, the words stick in my throat. I want to tell, I know I should so that somebody else knows something weird is going on; just in case this leads to another episode. But I can't make the words come out of my mouth. My body refuses to respond to the command to speak, I don't want her to know. The realization hits me like a freight train. Why don't I want the person I'd trust with my life not to know that I might have remembered something? Isn't that a good thing? There's some innate urge pushing me to hide it and I don't take the time to examine why. Instead I paste on my best smile, and say; "Oh yeah, all good. Just got a little dizzy there for a second."
She doesn't believe me, I can see it in the tension in her shoulder. Her petite frame vibrates with it. I grab my apple and, as nonchalantly as I can, take a bite before sauntering back toward the kitchen. "Guess I should probably eat something. Not that though." I make a disgusted face toward the would-be oatmeal. Turning to the fridge, I pull out the ingredients for a basic omelet and get to work cooking.
After a few minutes, Emma drifts into the kitchen. She tries to be inconspicuous about it but I catch her surveying the living room. She's looking for something, when she's happy that her assessment turns up nothing unusual she settles herself on the counter top next to me. Swinging her legs back and forth, she starts to fill me in on all my appointments and deadlines for the week. I'm only half-listening, most of my mind is preoccupied with analyzing the images I'd unearthed earlier. My head still aches with the phantom pain of it.
There's a dull ache at the base of my skull, a throbbing sort of pain. I want to write down all the things I remembered, or I think they're memories at least, but I don't want to risk leaving a trail for Emma to find. For some reason I know that she can't find out I'm remembering, there's something inside me telling me that she can't know. It's probably ridiculous and I'm half convinced I'm starting to go crazy but better safe than sorry right. I mean if I'm right and I tell her maybe something could go wrong but if I'm wrong then not telling her won't make a difference in the long run, right? I'm running in logic circles and getting nowhere, my best bet is to just keep this to myself for now and only tell my friends of it starts to affect my life drastically. After all, I am an adult, it's not like I have to keep them in the loop about every moment of my life.